The Good Life by Erin McGraw Read Free Book Online

said.
    â€œâ€˜Honey, are you all right?’ ‘Frederick, is there anything I can do?’”
    â€œI’m sorry,” she said. He lifted his stinging eyes to see her, blurry and green. “I truly am.”
    â€œIf I knew you were crying, I would have done something.” He absolutely should not have gone on to the next sentence. “I wouldn’t have let you cry on TV.”
    â€œWhat are you talking about?”
    In his shock, Frederick had plenty of time to watch the young waiter hastening to their table. His broad, welcoming smile had been installed all the way across the dining room.
    â€œYou know that your charges here have all been taken care of by the network,” the waiter said as soon as he was tableside. “If I were you, I’d keep the champagne coming. You look like movie stars. I’ll bet you spent the last two hours in front of a mirror.”
    Maybe he misinterpreted their silence. He lowered his voice to the level of a confidence. “The show sends most of its makeovers here. Sometimes the people look like they’re wearing costumes. You can tell that they just let the crew on the show do things to them. The important thing is to let people’s true selves shine out.” His smile blazed. Pat looked stunned. To Frederick he said, “You were the most honest thing I’ve ever seen on television.”
    Frederick said, “There was a close-up, wasn’t there?”
    â€œYou looked good.”
    â€œThat wasn’t exactly what I was asking.”
    â€œI said, ‘There is a man who knows his truest self.’ No one who saw that show will ever forget you.”
    â€œThank you,” Frederick said unsteadily.
    Pat’s voice, speaking to the waiter, was suddenly tart; her white Russian must have already dived into her bloodstream. “Haven’t you ever seen this show? Tomorrow somebody will get his hair dyed red and his wife will get a miniskirt, and everybody will clap again, and nobody will remember that Frederick’s beard took up most of a trash bag once it was off his face.”
    â€œThey’ll remember the ponytail,” said the waiter.
    Pat shook her head. “Did you see the show when Jack Carey gave a guy’s overalls a funeral? Another time he weighed all the makeup a woman wore every day to work.”
    â€œThree ounces, with the eyelashes,” the waiter said.
    â€œA ponytail is nothing,” she said.
    â€œHang on,” Frederick said, and cleared his throat. The tremble was back. “Everybody’s been telling me all day that I was being made into a new man. I thought that was the point. The gal who cut my hair kept saying that you’d never know me.”
    â€œFrederick, no one would ever be able to miss you.” She nodded at the waiter. “Just ask him. You’re the most unchanging thing he’s ever seen on television.”
    â€œThat’s not what I said,” the waiter protested.
    Frederick said, “Are you saying that I can’t be different? No matter what?”
    Perhaps because of the lipstick, Pat’s smile looked strange—saucy, appraising. “Prove it,” she said.
    â€œI know how to make a good thing last a long time,” he said.
    â€œSame guy.”
    â€œI appreciate what I’ve got.”
    â€œSame, same, same.”
    What was going on today with his shirt cuffs? Now they were twisted around his wrists like shackles. “I’m trying to give you what you want. You’re not making it easy.”
    â€œGood.”
    The waiter brushed his fingers over the tablecloth and made a sizzling noise. “If you two had talked like this on the show, they would have had to bleep you out.”
    Pat raised her slim new eyebrows suggestively. “This is the part of the show that doesn’t get advertised, where the couple starts fresh. They decide whether they want to get started with each